Missing Pieces
by Sokorra Lewis
Summary: She'd been running so long that she stopped caring. Till they caught up with her. AU to season 2 and sequel to Obession. [Complete]


Author Notes: this story came to me while I was writing "Tipsy." I wrote this in 45 minutes which is rare. It still needs some work but I decided to post it to see if I could get some constructive criticism on it so I can improve it. This story can be considered a sequel to "Obsession". I have it listed as Elizabeth and Rodney because they are the only pairing really truly mentioned and since the main character is an OC of mine. This has not be beta'd (my sister is working on it)

This is AU to Season 2. The siege did not end in victory for Atlantis.

* * *

She stopped wondering where the others were five years ago. She couldn't keep it up anymore. Going into whatever town on whatever planet she was on and searching the papers to see if there were any rumors of visitors or someone matching the description of those who scattered with her. She couldn't do it anymore.

Originally there were many of them. But then they were attacked and as far as she knew, they had scattered in all directions hoping to survive and met up somewhere. Most had made it to the alpha site. Some others had been pushed though other gate addressed and a select few had made it out on jumpers.

Only she hadn't seen any one of them for over a decade now and she had stopped caring. She stopped wishing that she was back home in Atlantis surrounded by files of languages she no longer needed to speak and the DVD player playing Kate and Leopold on mute. She stopped trying to remember what it felt like to feel the ocean breeze in her hair from the balcony she always took her breaks (and a cigarette if no one was looking).

She couldn't find the energy to care after five years of running.

Five years ago she had finally settled down in a small village about five miles away from the Stargate and started a business of transcribing documents for the local government. Apparently they liked her handwriting and the fact she easily learned their language. She bought a house a mile outside the city on the side away from the gate and lived a quiet life living with what the planet had in relevance to a cat back home.

However today a group of people walked into her office in town that could make her care once again. They looked familiar to her, and if she thought hard enough, their names would come up. The women was dressed commonly, although there was still enough red in the outfit to suit the old her. On her hip sat a five year old little girl with her mother's eyes and her daddy's curls. The man was the first one she saw and the first one she recognized.

Rodney Mckay.

Granted he looked a far cry from the scientist she remembered. His hair was longer and he even had a beard. He almost looked like he was happy now, living a simpler life on another planet as a teacher and raising a family with his wife, Elizabeth. She learned that their daughter Meghan was three and liked macaroni and cheese and that they were expecting another one in the fall. She felt a slight pang in her heart when the girl smiled and said something that _he_ would say. Rodney and Elizabeth seemed to understand as they remembered the man whose voice they could almost hear when she commented she liked fast rides at the fair. She thought of fast cars and ferris wheels.

They came in simply to get their papers in order. They had decided to move to another planet, the last having been evacuated when it was found that the wraith had placed a homing beacon on one of its eastern ports. When they had found this planet had not seen the wraith in close to ten generations they felt it was safe to move here. She told them how she had missed the alpha site and ended up being flown to another planet and crash landing on it (it had ran out of energy near a planet thank god) living her and another linguist on a planet where it was mostly water. Her co-worker had decided to stay but she had felt she had to move on.

Soon they came over every day for a meal or two, or she went to their home. The villagers would comment that they were glad to see her smiling again, that she had found her friends. She never admitted that she was still haunted by the attack or how her friends had brought back memories she had tried hard to forget.

About a year after the Mckays had arrived on Lureki, another old friend appeared. Carson had been going from planet to planet, offering his medical skills yet not finding a place to call home. It was ironic how nomadic they had become as a whole and yet now seemed to be forming their own community outside the walls of the village. Carson soon met and fell in love with a local women and his healing began as he found a home to belong to once again.

It was on Meghan's fifth birthday that the floor fell out of her carefully constructed denial. The Village elder had found a stranger roaming the fields near the gate. He had been delirious and needed Carson's medical attention and the group soon headed out to help the man. Only they knew exactly who he was when they saw him laying in a bed in the Elder's home, even with his expressive eyes closed. Elizabeth had stopped and gone pale, Rodney and Carson had rushed over and started helping even though it was clear they had been affected by seeing him.

She hadn't made in the house before she ran out. She couldn't handle seeing him again, not after building herself back up after the siege of Atlantis. Not after sixteen years previous of out right denial of what she felt for him. She still hated him for hurting her back then, and hated herself for thinking that truly mattered.

She did not go see him for the two weeks after that night. Elizabeth and Rodney tried to get her to go but she refused, always claiming she was much to busy to see him then. They both shook their heads and finally gave up after a week or two, knowing she could only come on her own. Carson gave her sympathetic looks, and her assistant at work gave her worried ones.

He decided to come in to see her when her post Atlantis countdown clock reached 13 years, four months and 22 days. She could get it down to hours and minutes if she really wanted to but she didn't. She didn't like to think that she had even kept track of the years she had been away from home. She ignored him until he came to stand right in front of her desk, in the way of her going to the print shop in basement to print off copies of what she had been working on. She stood there just staring at him, urging him to move with her eyes but like in the past, he ignored her.

She fell to pieces when he muttered her name and began to cry. For the first time since she had rushed into the jumper bay that night she let herself cry. And he simply held her. And told her what had happened after she had left. How Aiden had fought bravely but ended up dying at the hands of the wraith while taking down a ship. How Teyla had managed to get her people out of the city and to the Alpha site. How some of them had formed search parties and continued to look for survivors of the siege.

How he had searched for her himself.

She told him her side of the story. How she had almost died of a fever on one planet and on another been asked to marry the prince. They laughed at that one.

He was almost fully recovered and would soon leave to tell those who had made it to the Alpha site that he had found a place of refuge. The Alpha site had been victim to a cull already, and their numbers were down to a small handful now. She almost didn't let him go, but he assured her he'd be back in three days, with the fourteen remaining survivors of Atlantis along with him.

When they returned, Elizabeth and she were waiting at the gate and it was sight to behold as the group hugged amongst themselves. The Village Elders, hearing the plight of the city, had offered assistance in building homes for the survivors and suitable housing until the new homes could be completed. She herself was going to be housing Teyla and her new boyfriend, a former runner by the name of Ronon.

Its later in the night when she is sitting at the top of the hill in the field behind her house, watching the stars that she has closure. She has a new home, complete with her old family and some new. And as he joins her she can tell it has brought closure for more then just the events that had happened thirteen years ago, but it has healed some of the past between them as well.

He holds her hand and points out a star. She tells him the constellation and he makes up a story. And then the missing pieces of her life were finally back in place.


End file.
